The Juan MacLean

DFA club music maestro Juan Maclean has been laying the groundwork. First, there were killer singles, from "By the Time I Get to Venus" in 2002, to "Give Me Every Little Thing," to last year's "Happy House." There was a debut full-length (Less Than Human); remixes for colleagues like Air, Daft Punk, Dave Gahan, and Matthew Dear; international tours with LCD Soundsystem, Cut Copy, and Shocking Pinks; and DJ gigs from Telluride to Tel Aviv. Now comes the next stage of the operation--album two has arrived, entitled The Future Will Come.

Rather than retreat to a recording studio in Woodstock, NY, and toil in solitude, Maclean brought along Nick Millhiser and Alex Frankel (also known as Holy Ghost!) to lay down parts for The Future Will Come. "The next guideline was revisiting the Human League," reveals Maclean-- specifically the lineup responsible for the 1981 international bestseller Dare. The opening bars of "Happy House" trigger exuberance in packed nightclubs that easily matches the giddy heights of that time-tested synth-pop classic.

Maclean enlisted creative foil and DFA mainstay Nancy Whang. "The very first song we worked on, he already had his vocal part and wanted mine to serve as a counterpoint," she remembers. "From there, I could hear the male-female call-and-response."

With these points set, the pair wrote and recorded the album quickly. They strived to keep sounds and structures crisp and succinct. Focus was maintained via ruthless edits and repeated spins of "SexyBack." The results range from the bittersweet parry-and-thrust of "One Day" to the android R&B of "The Station." At the furthest extreme, the spare, desolate "Human Disaster" serves as a chilling contrast to the climatic reprise of "Happy House."

Polished, precise, fully realized and flawlessly executed from start to finish, The Future Will Come stands poised to disarm listeners in a surprising, rewarding way only certain albums can manage.